1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to compacted towels formed of hydroentangled or spunlace nonwoven fabric. More particularly, the present invention relates to compacted towels that have surface textures that recover following compaction and wetting and that have improved strength and wear characteristics due to being formed in both a machine direction and a cross lapping direction.
2. Description of the Related Art
Compact towels have been formed by spunlace techniques. The towels have included single direction webs (i.e., fibers arranged in the machine direction). The webs are hydroentangled by running web formed by carding the fibers into a single direction sheet and then subsequently passing the sheet under water jets to entangle the fibers. The resulting material is nonwoven and, in currently available compact towels, the material exhibits low resistance to tearing in the machine-direction (i.e., a direction perpendicular to the cross machine direction).
This single direction material is less than desirable because it easily comes apart when used as a towel. This single direction material also cannot be cut to be a exact size because one side is stronger than the other which leads to dimensional instability under stress.